


riot on an empty street

by andreaphobia



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Apocalypse, M/M, something is not quite right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-11 19:58:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1177300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andreaphobia/pseuds/andreaphobia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>The place that Shinji calls home is a sparse loft on the third floor of a squat, brick-encrusted tenement house, in the middle of an empty town. He calls it empty because that’s what it is; he’s hasn’t seen another soul since he came here—except for Kaworu, and Kaworu’s, well, <i>different</i>. There are cars parked on the side of the street, all empty, next to expired parking meters that blink their recriminations all alone into the night. The streets are lit, the stores are lit and stocked, but no one stands ready at the cashier’s stand to take their money. There’s no one <i>anywhere</i>.</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	riot on an empty street

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vi](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Vi).



> Birthday fic for Vi, originally posted on Tumblr.
> 
> Edited some since the first time.

The place that Shinji calls home is a sparse loft on the third floor of a squat, brick-encrusted tenement house, in the middle of an empty town. He calls it empty because that’s what it is; he’s hasn’t seen another soul since he came here—except for Kaworu, and Kaworu’s, well, _different_. There are cars parked on the side of the street, all empty, next to expired parking meters that blink their recriminations all alone into the night. The streets are lit, the stores are lit and stocked, but no one stands ready at the cashier’s stand to take their money. There’s no one  _anywhere_.

There’s even an old phone booth outside their apartment, a relic of some bygone time. No matter what buttons he presses when he picks up, he never hears anything but the dial tone.

It should worry him, this state of affairs; the vast strangeness of everything and the unreal feeling that permeates the very air, but he doesn’t put too much thought into it. In general, as though guided by instinct or a sense of self-preservation, he’s not inclined to think too deeply into things that have the potential to disturb him.

He shares this loft with his roommate, his friend, his constant companion, Nagisa  _please-call-me_ Kaworu, who is the only other person around. Kaworu does not seem to have much to do, apart from being with him. He rests, he reads; he accompanies Shinji whenever he chooses to step outside for a walk. He is patient and kind, he is gentle and affectionate. It scares Shinji, because he can’t think of any reason at all for why Kaworu should be nice to him. At least, he can’t remember one—but that’s another one of those disturbing thoughts, another path he’s trained himself not to go down. Isn’t it good enough that Kaworu is with him? he asks himself. And it is, it must be; so he lets the thought lie, and tells himself he is content.

*

Sometimes he has these dreams, these awful twisted nightmares that he can’t force himself to wake from. In the dream he’s immersed in darkness, so black it’s nearly poisonous. He’s running in one direction, although it’s so dark that it could be any direction. He’s running but he doesn’t want to run. Black hands extend towards him; some of them urge him along, but the others grasp at him, pulling at his clothes, his fingers, his legs, trying to slow him down. He doesn’t know what to do. And then he realizes that the hands and the darkness, they all belong to him, they’re all a part of him and he wakes up screaming, scrabbling at the sheets like a madman. That’s the realization that scares him most of all; that the hands pulling him back and pressing him forward are all his, they’re all him, the same him who runs and runs and runs and still doesn’t know where he’s going.

On nights like that, when he wakes, screaming and tangled in his sheets, Kaworu is there. Kaworu cradles his head in his lap; smoothes the damp hair back from his forehead and strokes his chest, his arm, over and over again in a soothing motion.  _I am here for you_ , it seems to say.  _Don’t be afraid_. But he never speaks; he only touches Shinji and watches him with those rabbit-red eyes that seem to glow in the light of the moon. Eventually, just like that, Shinji shuts his eyes and lets the feeling of Kaworu’s hand on his body rock him back to sleep.

On other nights he might wake up, not from any dream in particular but the dark and silent void they call sleep, and sit up to see Kaworu resting in the squashy armchair across the room from his bed, eyes open. It occurs to him that he’s never seen Kaworu sleeping; he supposes that he must go to bed after Shinji has closed his eyes, and wake up before Shinji ever opens them. (The absurdity of this crosses his mind but briefly; after all, the notion that Kaworu never sleeps is impossible, and he refuses to contemplate the impossible.)

Tonight, as he wakes up and sits up and looks at Kaworu, Kaworu looks back at him across the room; his pale eyes flash, and suddenly, Shinji is afraid.

“Have you ever seen a gun fired in slow motion?” Kaworu asks, suddenly. He seems to be speechifying; to be addressing some invisible audience just beyond Shinji’s perception. Shinji’s mouth hangs open in a bemused ‘o’, and he shakes his head, slowly.

“It’s quite fascinating, you know,” Kaworu goes on, in the tones of a connoisseur. “The fuse is lit, the shot is fired; and then the bolt slides back, ejecting the spent casing wherever it may fly. And then the next bullet is loaded from the magazine, ready, waiting for you to pull the trigger—“

As he speaks, Shinji feels his chest tighten; he feels a cold panic starting to claw its way up his spine. He flings himself forward, shakily, almost tumbling off the bed, and holds his hands out to Kaworu.

“Don’t talk about violence,” he begs, on the verge of hyperventilating. “Don’t. Don’t. Just—”

Kaworu starts, as though himself waking from a dream, and then _really_  looks at him, concern washing away the pensive look on his face.

“I’m sorry,” he says, raising himself from the chair and coming forward to take Shinji’s hands, and he even sounds like he means it. “I’m sorry. I won’t talk about violence. I’m sorry, Shinji. I’m sorry.”

He folds thin arms around Shinji until his breathing returns to normal; until the tremors leave his body and he is still once more.

*

Sometimes, when the weather is right and Shinji is in just the right mood, they go for a walk. It’s always peaceful outside, since there’s no one else around, and they can go into any store or shop they want to without being bothered.

On one of these days, they pass an old music shop, its wooden facade all cracked and crumbling, the glass store window full of dusty decay. But its lights are all on, and something about it draws Shinji in. He slips his hand in Kaworu’s and pulls him along, pulls him into the store where a bell tinkles over the door to summon a non-existent shop-owner.

The walls are covered in mounted brass instruments; there’s a glass case full of violins in the back. In the very center of the room, resting within a golden sunbeam which tumbles from the skylight in the ceiling like a gift from God, there is a janky old honky-tonk piano, an upright grand made out of polished rosewood. As Kaworu watches he walks over and runs his hand over the case, then brings his fingers away coated with a fine layer of dust. He sneezes, wrinkling his nose; Kaworu chuckles at his expression.

Shinji wipes his fingers clean on the seat of his jeans, and snuffles quietly, trying to clear his sinuses. “Can you play anything?” he asks.

“I could, once,” Kaworu says, slowly. When he traces Shinji’s footsteps to the piano, it’s done with reverence and something akin to awe, as though he’s approaching the long-lost altar of some ancient god. He pulls out the stool, seats himself, and stretches his fingers for a long moment before he finally begins to play.

The song is familiar, and yet not; it’s the first time Shinji’s heard it, and yet he feels like he’s heard it a million times before. He’s entranced by the melody which rises up around him, the notes which dance and spiral in the air, which thrum against his eardrums and tug at his heartstrings. He soars on a sea of harmonies and old-new refrains which make his head and heart ache like everything he has ever known has been obliterated.

For a long time after the last note echoes into silence, neither of them say anything.

Soon, Shinji realizes he is breathing a little heavily, and his cheeks are warm, so warm they must be pink.

“When did you…” he starts to ask, but partway through the sentence his voice fails him.

“I learned for it you,” Kaworu tells him seriously, looking right into his eyes.

Shinji blushes full red this time, and looks away, stammering something incomplete, something half-hearted. He doesn’t deserve this, he knows. He’s never done anything for Kaworu to deserve this; nothing he remembers, at any rate. And even if he had, he’s sure he still wouldn’t deserve it. There’s no kindness to be spared for the boy who runs and doesn’t know where he’s going. Even if he forgot everything else he had ever known, he would still remember that.

*

There are times—not often, but they do happen—when he wonders about the world, about how it got this way. Why the streets are all empty. Why he lives alone with Kaworu.

Weren’t there other people, once? They must have been there; they’ve left their marks everywhere. Those cars have to had belonged to someone. Now nothing moves on the streets but the traffic lights; green, amber, red, pedestrian crossing. The street lamps all come on at night to light the way for no one.

The afternoon after they come back from the music shop, there is a bird seated upon the windowsill, the first Shinji has ever seen since coming to this place. It’s a jackdaw, a dark-feathered little fellow with a piece of straw in his beak.

“Look, Kaworu,” he says, with childlike wonder, pointing towards it. Kaworu looks. The bird stares back with beady little eyes, its head cocked to one side. Then it chirrups, or perhaps it caws—the sound is muffled through the glass—and then it takes off. Shinji watches it disappear into the sky, leaving nothing but a scruffy black feather on the sill as evidence that it was ever there.

“Do you wish the birds would come back?” Kaworu asks, abruptly.

Shinji looks up sharply, confused. It’s a strange question, and for some reason, it makes him  feel uncomfortable. Kaworu, for his part, seems to sense this, and flashes him a quick smile, as though to reassure him—no, he really doesn’t have to answer after all. No, he doesn’t have to answer. He doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to do.

Shinji turns away from the window, away from the sill and the feather and the blue expanse of sky the jackdaw disappeared into. There’s something out there, waiting for him—he can feel it, and it scares him. He’s not sure what terrifies him more: the waiting, or the thing itself.

He doesn’t know how much longer he can keep running, either, and perhaps that’s scariest of all.

*

That night in bed, as Kaworu curls around him, his breath tickling the back of Shinji’s neck, Shinji comes to a resolution. It’s been a long time coming—they don’t have any calendars in the house, but he feels it might even have been years since they came to this place. Maybe even decades. He doesn’t know, and can’t tell for sure in any case. Time means nothing if nothing ever changes.

Tomorrow, he’ll ask Kaworu about the world. About where everyone else has gone, and why they’re all alone.

Tomorrow, when he wakes up… he’ll ask that much. He won’t run, but he’ll ask, and he’ll learn.

And then, everything will be all right again. He just knows it.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos appreciated! :D


End file.
